Elevate your work with creative tension
Elevate your work with creative tension
The social media viral popularity game is over
Buy the plane ticket, get your busker license, take that meeting, get on that Zoom call with total strangers.
“Tension is the feeling we experience just before we grow.
Ironically, it’s what we seek, at the very same time we avoid it.” Seth Godin
Uploading a song to the internet is easy. Zero tension.
Premiering your work “inside the dome of the Oskar-Lühning Telescope” is hard.
That’s what makes the easy stuff so alluring, as no one can judge you, or point and laugh if it doesn’t work out.
You can stay busy making Reels, but that’s another form of playing it safe, as hardly anyone will see them, let alone judge you for it.
Zero tension.
Instead, try writing an email to the five (or 50) people who open all your emails, or people who’ve bought from you in the past.
You could make a podcast and post it everywhere and reach practically no one, or you could make it for a small group of subscribers.
This creates tension because when you make a podcast for just a few people, it’s likely a few of them react in a meaningful way.
Changing the name of your project creates tension - will it confuse people? Will people forget about me? But you do the hard thing because it feels right in your bones.
There’s no tension with a product shot and a “buy now” button.
But you can create tension by documenting the process of making a great photograph and offer a limited edition print to your YouTube audience.
If I remember correcty this video only had 350 views by the time the prints were sold out.
So make that call, sign up for that marathon, email a venue and plan an actual event, with real people, in real life.
All of this hard work is less of a dopamine rush than playing the social media viral popularity game, but there’s tension, and it’s totally what you need.
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I've found high tension activities to be way more enriching, but it hurts way worse if it doesn't go well.
High risk = high reward (but also potential heartbreak)
Love it. Learning to invite and dance with tension is where the magic and growth happens, for sure!